Onion Slices

I just spent about 45 minutes abusing my poor fingers. Now, it wasn’t anything creepy, rather it was something quite fun. For quite a while now I’ve been meaning to learn a couple of skills that I’ve always wanted to learn. This last term at BCC, I took a class in Japanese. I learned a lot, but I’m not done yet. One of the other things that I’ve wanted to learn was how to play guitar. For quite a while now (about a year) I’ve had a plan in my head. The only small problem has been actually going out and starting.

Well, this Christmas, Julie got the fantabulous idea to get me a guitar! It is very, very pretty, with a shiny finish and a nice mellow tone. Today, with her out of the house at work, I figured that I would give a crack at learning how to stroke the strings. With a quick stop at our local Fred Meyers for a beginning book and a tuner, I returned home to pluck. I busied myself around the house, first putting away much of the Christmas-fu and then getting a head start on a couple loads of laundry. Then, with some chores out of the way, I started working my way through the book. The first couple of lessons were aimed at kids who know nothing of music theory, so after a quick scan to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I moved on to the chords!

G
The first chord presented was the “G” chord. (Please pardon the interruption, I had to de-cat my laptop. For some reason, George and Gracie think it’s a great place to lay) This is played by holding down the first string, with the third finger, between the 2nd and 3rd frets. Then, with that string held down, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd string are strummed. After looking around on the Internet, this isn’t really the “G” chord, but it’s a start for me!

D7
The second chord for the day was the “D7” chord. This was a little bit more difficult with the first finger holding down the second string, between the nut (top of the guitar neck) and the 1st fret, with the second finger on the 3rd string and the third finger on the 1st string, both between the 1st and the 2nd fret. Once the fingers are all in the right place, the strings 1 through 4 are strummed. It’s much more difficult to imagine than it is to look at it on paper!

Well, learning these two chords was not that difficult or painful, what was, was switching back and forth between the two. Learning those individual chords is nice, but the real trick is sliding that third finger up and down between the two fret positions to switch between G and D7. While I was able to do it (VERY slowly) it took a toll on my poor, un-callused fingers. This is one of those skills that will take a while to really learn! (:

One of the reasons why I really like the holidays is the memories that get created. I love getting to spend time with my family and this has always been a time for it. For the first time in a long while, my family is a bit scattered to the winds, so I wanted to write down some of the important things that I’ve been thinking about.

First, I want to revisit the point of loving the memories. One of the ones I was thinking about earlier today was the first Christmas that I was with my Julie. We had done the rounds of family gatherings and were interested in just heading back to the quiet of home. On our way home, we figured that we would be able to find SOMETHING for dinner, since in our hurry, we didn’t plan for that. After much driving around, the only place that we were able to find that was open was a Subway restaurant that was in a Barney’s rest stop in Perrysburg, Ohio.

What made this meal so much fun was the attitude of the clerk at the Subway. We walked in, hoping to get some tasty, tasty sammiches, and we were greeted with the most hang-dog expression I’ve ever seen. As we were picking out what we wanted, a line formed behind us as people rolled in, lured by the glowing promise of an open place of eating. I made a comment to the poor, beleaguered clerk about the rush and with a huge sigh, he recounts that he “only wanted to work on Christmas because he thought that no one would come in.” Now, looking back on it, Julie and I still laugh when we think about the poor man who just wanted to go to work and not have to do anything.

The second thing I mentioned was that the holidays, for me, were all about getting to spend time with my family. Even when most of my family was living close (when we were in Toledo), it was still a special time. This year, Julie and I are in Seattle, and while we miss our family, we’ve had a good first Christmas. The only difficulty has been that it doesn’t feel that much like Christmas! With all the snow and the days off, we’ve still been having to work, and it still feels like just another week. We have a load of presents under the tree and decorations around. It’s lovely, but missing that last essential bit.

The last thing I’ve been thinking about is just something of a more plebian nature. I love to give gifts to people that are useful! One of the fond memories I have of Christmas is from several years ago. My brother came up with a great gift idea for my father and my sister and I were quickly on board. Just as a bit of back story, my father was very difficult to buy gifts for. He was very much the type of person to go out and get the things that he was interested in, instead of waiting a bit.

On with the story. What my brother concocted was the idea to get my dad a remote car starter for his truck. Being in the frozen north, we had cold temperatures and snow for a good portion of the year, and due to a packed garage, my dad kept his truck parked outside in the driveway and let my mom park her car under cover. With the plan in place, I “borrowed” my dad’s truck, whisked it away to the shop and got the started installed.

I don’t know how much he knew, since the antenna was kind of hard to miss, but he certainly acted surprised when we made the gift official. While that was nice, but what has made this a special memory for me is that he used that remote starter all the time. It didn’t even have to be really cold. He loved to pop the truck on, make some coffee and then go hop in and go! I have gotten to give a couple of other gifts over the years such as that (like the fountain I made for my mom), but that still ranks as one of the best.

The other day, Julie went in to work while I slimed around and worked from home. About 1:00 P.M. I decided that I wanted some lunch. Thinking that I was going to cook some bacon grilled cheese sandwiches, I prepped some bacon.

Into the oven at 300 degrees for about 40 minutes was the goal. I decided not to wait and cooked a couple of eggs and then fried up some bacon in the traditional way.

This mixed with some toast made a nice meal.

Since I still had some hot bacon grease, I cooked up a nice quesadilla.

And it was all REALLY delicious. I never ended up making the bacon grilled cheese sandwich. Julie ended up eating the beautiful bacon…

So, here in the Seattle area, we’ve gotten a TON of snow.

But we haven’t let that stop us. Just for fun, I brought in a bowl of snow for the cats. George ignored it (surprise), Lucky sniffed at it and then ran away, but Gracie decided to sniff it and see what was happening…

I wised up and put a towel under the bowl in this one:

After sniffing it for a minute or two, she was bored with this new thing and decided that George had it right and this was something to be ignored.

Woo! Now I can talk about it! It looks like Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has been officially blessed and released to manufacturer (RTM)! Once I get my grubby little hands on it, I’ll be posting pictures and how I have things set up, but I wanted to mention a couple of things that are key (to me) in this release:

• 64-bit only
• Officially supported on Server 2008
• Simplified Edge role management and existence
• Management improvements
  • Additions to the MMC snap in to support new features (Conference Attendant, Application Sharing, etc..)
  • Administrative tools now have a separate install (I can put them on my remote workstation)
  • Automatic and Push updates to ALL devices (Roundtable, Phone Edition, OC 2007 R2)
• Improved Certificate Wizard and Management (I haven’t seen this yet, but it is my favorite on paper)

Now that I have that little list, I can start to go through the Planning and Architecture and build a NEW OCS design based on the new goodies. I’ll post a diagram as soon as I have it ready.

Jeremy and I went shooting at Wade’s indoor range for lunch today.

I fired a Glock Model 35 (similar to my Model 34 that I used to own).

Jeremy picked the Ruger Mark III, but I didn’t get any pictures.

I did okay. This is two groupings I had on one target:

It almost looks like I’m drawing crosses, but that wasn’t intentional. We both had a blast and I’m thinking about getting together another group to go again soon!

Yes, I’ve upgraded to a new blog platform, yet again (: